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Bart Fearing Smallwood was an African-American community organizer in the Windsor
and Indian Woods communities of Bertie County, N.C., in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
He was responsible for establishing the Blue Jay Recreation Center, the Blue Jay Baseball
team, and the Blue Jay Volunteer Fire Department to serve the recreational and fire
protection needs of his isolated rural neighborhood. Smallwood was also active in
a number of other organizations, including advisory boards for the Bertie County schools
and for his employer, Lea Lumber and Plywood Company, and he served on the Bertie
County Involvement Council. He was married to Lois Marie Cherry Smallwood and had
five children. Bart Smallwood died in December 1985. This collection documents Bart
Smallwood's life as an African-American community organizer. It also contains materials
relating to African-American families and African-American education, both in schools
and in higher education institutions. Community activities are represented by minutes,
baseball score books, programs for special events, and memos and correspondence relating
to the organization, administration, and financing organizations with which Smallwood
was involved. Smallwood's personal life is reflected in letters, financial material,
and family pictures. The collection contains items relating to Bart Smallwood's children,
especially about their education, including Angelia Smallwood's attendance at East
Carolina University and Anthony Smallwood's courses at North Carolina A & T State
University. Materials relating to Smallwood's son Arwin include his dissertation,
"A History of Three Cultures: Indian Woods, North Carolina, 1585 to 1995" (1997), and related materials: photocopies of published information about North Carolina,
photographs of buildings and scenes in and around Indian Woods, and audiotaped interviews
with residents of Indian Woods and Bertie County.

This collection contains additional materials that are not processed and are currently
not available to researchers. For information about access to these materials, contact
Research and Instructional Services staff. Please be advised that preparing unprocessed
materials for access can be a lengthy process.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants,
as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Provenance

Received from Arwin D. Smallwood of Peoria, Ill., in July 1997 (Acc. 97096), with
additions in October 1998 (Acc. 98208) and June 1999 (Acc. 98379).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or
confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy
laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. §
132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of
State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.).
Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to
identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent
of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under
common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's
private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable
person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no
responsibility.

The following terms from
Library of Congress Subject
Headings
suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the
entire collection; the terms do
not usually represent
discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or
items.

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online catalog.

Bart Fearing Smallwood was an African-American community organizer in the Windsor
and Indian Woods communities of Bertie County, N.C., in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
He was responsible for establishing the Blue Jay Recreation Center, the Blue Jay Baseball
team, and the Blue Jay Volunteer Fire Department to serve the recreational and fire
protection needs of his isolated rural neighborhood. Smallwood was also active in
a number of other organizations, including advisory boards for the Bertie County schools
and for his employer, Lea Lumber and Plywood Company, and he served on the Bertie
County Involvement Council.

Bart F. Smallwood was married to Lois Marie Cherry Smallwood, and had five children:
Angelia, Anthony, Arwin, Brady, and Tanya Smallwood. Bart Smallwood died in December
1985.

This collection documents Bart Smallwood's life as an African-American community organizer. It also contains materials relating to African-American families and to African American education, both at school and in higher education institutions.

Materials document the organizations with which Smallwood was involved in the Windsor
and Indian Woods communities of Bertie County, N.C.. His personal and family life is also documented. Letters and other materials in Series 1 document Smallwood's
efforts in behalf of community organizations. Series 2 documents organizational activities through by minutes, baseball scorebooks,
programs for special events, and organizational memos and correspondence. Series 3
contains published material, tourist brochures, catalogs, and clippings.

Series 4 contains materials relating to the dissertation written by Smallwood's son
Arwin Smallwood. These include drafts and a bound copy of the dissertation, "A History of Three Cultures: Indian Woods, North Carolina, 1585 to 1995," submitted for the Ph.D. in history at the Ohio State University in 1997. Also included
is material collected in the course of Arwin Smallwood's research on Indian Woods, N.C., including photocopies of published information about North Carolina, photographs
of buildings and scenes in and around Indian Woods, and audiotaped oral history interviews with residents of Indian Woods and Bertie County, N.C.

Series 5 contains materials relating to the Smallwood family. Most of the material relates to the children's education, especially Angelia Smallwood's attendance at East Carolina University and Anthony Smallwood's courses at North Carolina A & T State University.

Note the additions of October 1998 and June 1999 follow the organization scheme of
the original deposit.

Expand/collapse Series 1. Letters, Financial, and Other General Material, 1960-1986.

About 500 items.

Arrangement: by type of material.

General materials generated in the course of Bart Smallwood's life, including family letters and letters relating to his activities as a community organizer, various kinds of financial material, including bills, receipts, tax and insurance
information, and Medicaid and Food Stamp information. There are many programs from
church services attended, especially at Indian Woods Baptist Church, and from funerals in the community. Anthony Smallwood, one of Bart Smallwood's sons,
was a Marine recruit and received the Marine publication,
The Tarheel Gazette, and wrote two letters to his parents from the Marine base at Parris Island in July 1985. Many of the undated letters are drafts and copies of letters Bart Smallwood
wrote on behalf of the organizations with which he was involved, often to request
donations.

Materials relating to Bart Smallwood's many activities as a community organizer in the African-American community of Indian Woods in Bertie County, N.C. Smallwood was the originator and president of the Blue Jay Recreation Center, the founder of the Blue Jay Baseball Team, and the organizer and president of the Blue Jay Volunteer Fire Department. Smallwood played a central role in these three organizations, but there is also
material from a number of other organizations in which Smallwood was active. These
include the West Bertie Elementary and the District-Wide Advisory Councils; the Prince
Hall Masons; and the Safety Committee and Advisory Board of Lea Lumber and Plywood Company, Smallwood's employer. Also included are memos and other material received by Smallwood
as an employee of Lea Lumber.

The documentation from the three Blue Jay organizations includes meeting minutes and
other administrative records, baseball score books, raffle tickets, bills and receipts,
and programs from special events, such as the Blue Jay Recreation Center Mortgage
Burning ceremony. Note that many of the letters in Series 1 relate to Smallwood's
activities with these organizations.

Primarily published material related to Smallwood's activities in Bertie County, N.C. Included are supply catalogs for playground equipment, Boy Scout gear, baseball uniforms,
and other items. Brochures mainly relate to tourist attractions from Bertie County
and Windsor, N.C., but also from as far afield as the Six Nations of Ontario, Canada. Publications
include a 1978 copy of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's magazine,
SCLC, featuring a story called "April 4, 1978: Memory March for the Right to Live"; information
on North Carolina's volunteer programs; and a newsletter put out by the Roanoke Electric Membership Corporation called
Roanoke Electric Flashes. Clippings document the achievements and deaths in the Smallwood family and among their friends, as well as community activities.

Material produced or collected by Arwin D. Smallwood, Bart Smallwood's son, while researching his 1997 history dissertation for the Ohio
State University, "A History of Three Cultures: Indian Woods, North Carolina, 1585 to 1995." Included are drafts of several dissertation chapters and many photocopies of articles
and maps relating to North Carolina history. Arwin Smallwood took many photographs of buildings, gravestones, and roadside scenes in and around Indian Woods, N.C. to illustrate his dissertation, and these photographs are also in this series. Also
included are cassette tapes containing oral history interviews conducted by Arwin Smallwood with various members of the Indian Woods
community in December 1989.

Expand/collapseAdditions of October 1998 (Acc. 98208) and June 1999 (Acc. 98379)

About 4000 items (6.0 linear feet).

1970s-1990s.

This addition contains personal papers of Bart Smallwood's children, as well as material
similar to that received in the original accession that document the organizations
with which Bart Smallwood was involved and his personal life. The additional material
has not been integrated into the collection, but has been roughly sorted and organized
into the same series, with the addition of a series of Smallwood family papers, containing personal papers of Angelia Smallwood, Anthony Smallwood, Arwin Smallwood, Brady Smallwood, and Tanya Smallwood.

As in the original accession, letters and other materials in Series 1 document Bart
Smallwood's personal life and efforts in behalf of community organizations. Series
2 documents organizational activities through minutes, programs for special events,
and organizational memos and correspondence. Series 3 contains published material,
tourist brochures, catalogs, clippings, and newspapers. Series 4 contains material
about Arwin Smallwood's dissertation about the history of Indian Woods, N.C. Series 5 contains personal papers of Bart Smallwood's children, mostly about their
education, especially Angelia's attendance at East Carolina University and Anthony's courses at North Carolina A & T State University.